The Windows Maintenance Challenge: Part 1

This article is the first in a series that will help you determine which tools — free or paid — yield the best results on your specific PC.

Personal-computer salvation? Or snake oil?

You’ve undoubtedly seen the ads; they state something similar to: “This software is guaranteed to make your PC run like new! Download it for free!”

The ads often promise a fix for every PC affliction: “It’s the only software that instantly speeds up your PC, prevents crashes, fixes system errors, boots Windows faster, deletes malware and junk files …” and so on, and so on.

For many PC users, that sounds great. Simply click a button and everything gets magically fixed. That’s certainly easier than trying to use all those tools already built into Windows — or the myriad of specialized, third-party maintenance tools.

But in truth, there never has been one application that fixes all Windows problems — and it’s doubtful there ever will be. Windows is simply too complex, and the range of PC configurations is virtually infinite. A suite of tools might do the trick, but then there’s the question of free versus paid.

Windows has built-in tools for nearly any problem — and they, along with many third-party tools, are completely free. Most of the do-it-all maintenance applications are paid. (These commercial products often offer a free scan; but to fix any system errors they might find, you have to accept a paid subscription.)

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